Opening new file in Bengal windows

It was in March 2004 that the Information Technology Department of West Bengal decided to change its address. It shifted out of the dowdy Wr...

It was in March 2004 that the Information Technology Department of West Bengal decided to change its address. It shifted out of the dowdy Writers’ Building to move to the upmarket commercial hub of Camac Street. It had a mission with a short deadline — to establish the state as the next IT destination in the country.

The dice was loaded against it. For, not only was the state a late entrant into a sector that was booming, it had to also fight the perception that West Bengal was not exactly an investment destination and it had lagged behind other states.

When the department took up new quarters, it had already joined the battle. Over two-and-a-half years, it has held 51 roadshows in the country and made a global pitch too in UK, Germany and Sweden. However, a more recent development has left the industry in no doubt about the department’s commitment.

Rajarhat (or New Town, as it is also called) is being groomed as the new face of Kolkata. It was scheduled to take over from Salt Lake’s Sector-V as the hub of IT addresses. Four prestigious IT infrastructure projects, covering a built-up space of 73 lakh square feet, are already coming up there.

But the soaring land prices in the area have been deterring more IT investors from coming in. Wipro’s Azim Premji took the issue even to Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. At Rs 2.16 crore per acre, Rajarhat was proving too exorbitant in comparison to land available at Rs 40-60 lakh per acre at other IT destinations around the country.

The IT department held several meetings with the state’s urban development ministry and its arm, Housing Infrastructural Development Corporation (Hidco), which owns the land at Rajarhat. Hidco refused to climb down.

Faced with a deadlock, the IT department then decided to directly acquire 500 acres between Rajarhat and Dum Dum airport for exclusive use by the IT and IT-enabled services (ITES) investors. This project is now three times the size of the existing IT complex at Salt Lake. Meanwhile, it is continuing its negotiations for bringing down the prices at Rajarhat.

Believe it or not, the department has a staff of just 14. And it’s proving to be the main catalyst for a business that earned about Rs 1,837 crore in the last financial year and employs 32,000 IT professionals in 237 companies in the state. Though still a small force, the state’s IT sector is growing at a rate of 74 per cent as compared to the national average of 32 per cent.

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Of course, there is a lot of catching up to do and this is not lost on the department. ‘‘This is a business about speed,’’ observes State IT Secretary G D Gautama. He strives to keep the response time short — the registration time has been brought down to 10 days. The sector is largely free from government approvals.

The department helps prospective investors interact with the urban development department, the fire service, the electricity department and BSNL, among others.

The department has its own newsletter on the web that offers regular updates on what’s current in the state’s IT sector. The next 12-30 months are expected to see 13.3 million square feet of built-up space being created for IT in Kolkata. What the industry here will now have to focus on is moving up the value chain in the BPO sphere.